Lindsey,Yes, that is where the students bring their own device to school and use it for educational purposes. Many 'old school' teachers are afraid of BYOD because they fear that students will be texting, facebooking, snapchatting, or whatever else they want to do. My answer to that it, if you restrict the use of technology in your classroom then they are going to be doing those things anyway, as a matter of fact they are probably doing them right under your nose to spite you.

I enjoy BYOD and even allowed my students access to their devices before the policy went into place. I loved having students googling things that we were talking about in class. My students would be researching a topic as I introduced it. One day I introduced a novel, Left For Dead, it is the story about the USS Indianapolis and Captain McVay, as I was going over the cover and giving my opinion about how I felt Captain McVay was a scapegoat one of my students raises his hand and tells me that according to blah, blah "website right here it says exactly what you said and it says...." Another time we were doing how a bill becomes a law and a one day mini lesson turned into a two week lesson on fracking because of their devices. The bill I used, because it was talked about on the nightly news the night before was on fracking plus one of my kids wanted to invest in fracking in the stock market game so it just made sense to use it. They picked that thing apart, every ounce of special interest groups they found youtube videos for, I had shy kids that never spoke out in class finding interactive sites on the fracking process to share with the class. There was absolutley no way that I could have pulled all of that together by myself. It was unbelievable what my students pulled off and what they learned, oh and did I mention that it was an inclusion class. Everyone was involved, everyone had equal value, no one was excluded. One part of the bill talked about providing retreads for state vehicles (this is our state-NC) from the recycled material--this was to appease on of the specail interest groups--and one of my lowest (8th grader that could barely read on a 2nd grade level) jumped on that like a bird on a worm. He was all over that because he had a love for cars, he researched every aspect of retreads and the dangers of retreads and he showed us all kinds of videos on retreads and what happens when they separate.

I was not supposed to graduate until next summer either. The 18 credit hours this summer is making it possible. I am so thankful for everything all the instructors are doing to ensure our graduation. ... more

Cindi, that is awesome. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with me! It sounds like it is a great tool. I plan to talk to my principal about it next year if I have enough students who... more

That is great! I have students beg to bring their ipad and tables to school so that the can use them during out SSR time. I think it would be so great! I would just require monitoring by the teacher. ... more